EMANATION, EVOLUTION, CREATION August 16, 2011

Whether creation is the endearing criterion for the ceaseless process of becoming in Kosmos is subject of debate. Theos Sophia or divine wisdom, the body of spiritual knowledge and truth mandated by the spiritual Hierarchy to be released to the broad public at the close of the 19th century, has an alternative viewpoint to offer regarding the subject.

The One Universal Principle—omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, God as the folks sayeth, is no personal, anthropomorphic being that we chose to look like. The Spirit-Force from which we were projections or emanations—“creations” as the devotee folks choose to call it—doesn’t sleep at all. So during the ‘day of Brahma’ when the manvantara (cycle of lifewave) begins with the outbreath of the Almighty, Kosmos and subjective worlds (inclusive of beings) emanate from the Spirit-Force, each entity then subject to the universal laws emanating from the same.

God does not create, and there is no such thing as a personal God. These truths were resonated by the mahatmas and their chelas time and again, though indeed such lines are hard to accept by devotees who are used to mechanistic thoughts about the Spirit-Force and the realms of living. That God ‘creates’ is the product of finite mortal minds who equated the evolution process to creation.

Below is the quotation from a section of the book The Key to Theosophy by Helena P. Blavatsky.

EVOLUTION AND ILLUSION
ENQUIRER. But who is it that creates each time the Universe?
THEOSOPHIST. No one creates it. Science would call the process evolution; the pre-Christian philosophers and the Orientalists called it emanation: we, Occultists and Theosophists, see in it the only universal and eternal reality casting a periodical reflection of itself on the infinite Spatial depths. This reflection, which you regard as the objective material universe, we consider as a temporary illusion and nothing else. That alone which is eternal is real.
ENQUIRER. At that rate, you and I are also illusions.
THEOSOPHIST. As flitting personalities, to-day one person, to-morrow another — we are. Would you call the sudden flashes of the Aurora borealis, the Northern lights, a “reality,” though it is as real as can be while you look at it? Certainly not; it is the cause that produces it, if permanent and eternal, which is the only reality, while the other is but a passing, illusion.
ENQUIRER. All this does not explain to me how this illusion called the universe originates; how the conscious to be, proceeds to manifest itself from the unconsciousness that is.
THEOSOPHIST. It is unconsciousness only to our finite consciousness. Verily may we paraphrase verse v, in the 1st chapter of St. John, and say “and (Absolute) light (which is darkness) shineth in darkness (which is illusionary material light); and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” This absolute light is also absolute and immutable law. Whether by radiation or emanation — we need not quarrel over terms — the universe passes out of its homogeneous subjectivity on to the first plane of manifestation, of which planes there are seven, we are taught. With each plane it becomes more dense and material until it reaches this, our plane, on which the only world approximately known and understood in its physical composition by Science, is the planetary or Solar system — one sui generis, we are told.
ENQUIRER. What do you mean by sui generis?
THEOSOPHIST. I mean that, though the fundamental law and the universal working of laws of Nature are uniform, still our Solar system (like every other such system in the millions of others in Cosmos) and even our Earth, has its own programme of manifestations differing from the respective programmes of all others. We speak of the inhabitants of other planets and imagine that if they are men, i. e., thinking entities, they must be as we are. The fancy of poets and painters and sculptors never fails to represent even the angels as a beautiful copy of man — plus wings. We say that all this is an error and a delusion; because, if on this little earth alone one finds such a diversity in its flora, fauna and mankind — from the sea-weed to the cedar of Lebanon, from the jelly-fish to the elephant, from the Bushman and negro to the Apollo Belvedere — alter the conditions cosmic and planetary, and there must be as a result quite a different flora, fauna and mankind. The same laws will fashion quite a different set of things and beings even on this our plane, including in it all our planets. How much more different then must be external nature in other Solar systems, and how foolish is it to judge of other stars and worlds and human beings by our own, as physical science does!
ENQUIRER. But what are your data for this assertion?
THEOSOPHIST. What science in general will never accept as proof — the cumulative testimony of an endless series of Seers who have testified to this fact. Their spiritual visions, real explorations by, and through, physical and spiritual senses untrammelled by blind flesh, were systematically checked and compared one with the other, and their nature sifted. All that was not corroborated by unanimous and collective experience was rejected, while that only was recorded as established truth which, in various ages, under different climes, and throughout an untold series of incessant observations, was found to agree and receive constantly further corroboration. The methods used by our scholars and students of the psycho-spiritual sciences do not differ from those of students of the natural and physical sciences, as you may see. Only our fields of research are on two different planes, and our instruments are made by no human hands, for which reason perchance they are only the more reliable. The retorts, accumulators, and microscopes of the chemist and naturalist may get out of order; the telescope and the astronomer’s horological instruments may get spoiled; our recording instruments are beyond the influence of weather or the elements.
ENQUIRER. And therefore you have implicit faith in them?
THEOSOPHIST. Faith is a word not to be found in theosophical dictionaries: we say knowledge based, on observation and experience. There is this difference, however, that while the observation and experience of physical science lead the Scientists to about as many “working” hypotheses as there are minds to evolve them, our knowledge consents to add to its lore only those facts which have become undeniable, and which are fully and absolutely demonstrated. We have no two beliefs or hypotheses on the same subject.
ENQUIRER. Is it on such data that you came to accept the strange theories we find in Esoteric Buddhism?
THEOSOPHIST. Just so. These theories may be slightly incorrect in their minor details, and even faulty in their exposition by lay students; they are facts in nature, nevertheless, and come nearer the truth than any scientific hypothesis.